Week #2016.35 on SébPhilatélie

Monday 29 August: cartophily, philately and genealogy.
French newspaper Le Figaro proposed a reprint of a 1903 article on the novelty in Summer holiday correspondence that pictorial postcards created in the beginning of the 20th century.

Le Tréport, Normandy: the bath (collection Casa-Rodriguez, 2009, creative commons licence; reproduced in LeFigaro.fr, 26 August 2016).

Imagine that only a handful of words was then authorised on the picture side. Instead of an "it was better before" approach, the 1903 journalist appreciated that the holidaymakers could enjoy their summer time instead of writing lengthly letter describing the place and the activities.

I continued with a critic of postcard specialist Serge Zeyons in the September 2016 issue of Timbres magazine. The monthly encountered a printing reform and Zeyons' article suffers of it: the pictures are so tiny. But the text is longer than usual and with a bibliography to extend the topic way further than postcards: life in the farms and country in old time France.

And I wonder: could Timbres create a joint event with a genealogy magazine? The latter and its readers could retrieve the identity of the people on Zeyons' card while the former and its readers could value the card and the stamp... All of them discovering the multiple interest of the postcard collection...

Tuesday 30 August: Saint-Pierre and Miquelon born artist came back for the Summer.
It's a tradition for landscape painter Raphaële Goineau to spend August in her native Saint-Pierre, in the French collectivity in front of Newfoundland, Canada. It's a tradition for the local public television to report of her stay and current activities in Western France and in the archipelago.

Here is the 27 August report on SPM 1ère.

Le Banc bleu, a painting by Raphaële Goineau , stamp issued 2009. A wooden and color touch reminding North American houses (colnect.com).

This year, the journalists reported her new role of artistic consultant for the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon philately since the death of Marc Taraskoff in March 2015. She is seen adapting on her computer a naval drawing by a local artist to adapt it for intaglio printing at Phil@poste Boulazac, the French post printing plant.

Wednesday 31 August: Who said it? or a philatelic parody of the burkini crazyness.
Beware: disrespect towards French Prime Ministers and female body content in the post (since the French males seems obsessed by what women should show on the beach this summer).

The current Marianne of the Youth issued 2013, designed by Olivier Ciappa and David Kawena. Ciappa alleged on the presidential unveiling that she was inspired by Femen activist Inna Shevchenko (first day cancels took place in the city where there was a high school that participated to the Marianne selection).

Who said: "Marianne, she's bare breasted because she feed the people. She doesn't wear a veil because she's free! That's the Republic!" (count: it just enough to be retwitted!)

A: Olivier Ciappa, Republic-inspired, to explain the seem to be bare shoulders and long hair of his design... before the now famous tweet about Inna Shevchenko.

B: Inna Shevchenko herself while demonstrating fully nude in front of the townhall of Nice, to enjoy the stripping on beach policy of security deputy major Christian Estrosi... Just before she was arrested by local policemen because, the conservative being hypocritical, males should only covet female bodies on beaches.

C: Prime Pornograph Dominique de Villepin, then Prime Minister, just before grossly concluding that "France wish to be fucked. It itches in her pelvis". (note: B never happened, C did...).

D: Current Prime Minister and now new Prime Pornograph of the Nation Manuel Valls because his junior collaborators can't read completely and with curiosity the works of Maurice Agulhon, historian of how the Third Republic took root in our nation, and of Pierre Nora, specialist of the Republican symbols and places. University professor Mathilde Larrere tried to educate the "moron" through his own language: tweets.

What about radical imams? Foreign finance of mosque building? Surely more effective yet more dangerous than disturbing mothers with children on beaches or kids not eating pork at school restaurants.

Thursday 1 September: An inspired rentrée at the RPSLondon.
The first trimester of the schoolyear will be well occupied at 41 Devonshire Place, London, between the traditional activities of the Royal Philatelic Society London and the special events the society hosts. The article in French put together news from The London Philatelist dated July-August.

My apologies for the exhibitors and lecturers I won't name. The Weekly is a summary ; they are acknowledged in the French article and will be again in articles commenting their individual event during the season.

On the special event side: the World Cinderella Congress 16-18 September, the same week of Stampex, its dealers and two exhibitions (Cinderella Stamp Club and King George VI Collectors Society) and of the first paper by Keeper Michael Sefi from stamps of Guyana and Barbados in the Royal Philatelic Collection (Thursday 15).

September exhibitions at 41 will continue to show the Francis Kiddle Congress collection and the Cinderellas created by groups of retired and elderly through a partnership between the RPSL and the University of the Third Age (U3A). The Society is looking for a supply of gummed paper and a perforation machine to allow the successful activity to be reproduced outside London.

Thursdays lectures and exhibitis until the beginning of November will present many islands, both actual ones (Barbados, Channel Islands occupied by the German forces, the Victorian fiscal stamps of the West Indies) and philatelic ones (fiscal so, scoutism and scout postal history by Norwegian Hallvard Slettebø).

The two monthly exhibitions will cover other fields: Bahrain postal history in October, classical mail of Great Britain in November.

Those who are curious of new fields and tools for philately will be interested by the two final events of my list. Wednesday 12 October, the Crawford Seminar will educate to "Digital Philately for Beginners". How the computer, its softwares and companions such as the scanner, can enrich the practice, study and collection of stamps and mail (scan, image study), down the stream to how to create an exhibition or spread the knowledge (slideshow, publishing). John Horsey gave a very stricking evidence of that with his monumental study of hundreds of the Queen Victoria 5 pounds (a book, and a RPSL conference October 2015).

Next, Friday 4 November, Chris King, immediate Past President of the RPSL, will give this year Stuart Rossiter Memorial Lecture on "Challenges and Opportunities of Researching Online". In the study case of Napoleonic Danmark, he will show a postal historian can become an actual historian in the social, economic, political subfields.

An approach supported in recent competition with the 2C class of the International Federation of Philately that was recently found in France with Timbres magazine article (May 2015) by Guy Dutau on a 1861 letter from Tahiti to Chile resolved with the technics of genealogy. And how Robert Marion told visitors of his Mauritius postal/social history exhibition the future of the desperatelt ill writer of a letter... That didn't die in Mauritius.

Saturday 3 September: Funny Hong Kong stamps cancelled in Copenhagen.
Bought for fun at the Danish dealer JF-Stamps, last Paris Philex.

The Danish cancel on the Hong Kong stamps (personal collection).

A 6 April 1951 envelope posted by John Manners and Co. Ltd, in Hong Kong and arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 10. But why apply the mark on the stamps while another cover of the same people and almost dates is clearly marked lower.